Remember last week when I mentioned Mike Pagliarulo and Adam White’s Baseline Report? Here’s what they recently had to say about Kei Igawa, tonight’s starter, in a feature on Brian Cashman:

Igawa could potentially be one of the worst free agent signings ever – in Mike Hampton territory. Dare we say another Carl Pavano? At least Hampton did have stretches of decent production after he left Colorado. Igawa, on the other hand, might never be better than what he is now: a AAA pitcher with an attitude who is at best a back end starter on a second division team, possible long man or innings eater out of the pen and an insurance policy for the major league club. Cashman has another 4.5 years and $45M committed to Igawa! The Yankees chose not to use his Japan consultants, who have told him to walk away from Igawa. The consultants knew about the Igawa hold-out in spring training 2005 in Japan, and how Igawa’s manager slapped him for not playing during spring training after the team had won the NPB championship. Igawa then laid down that year and wasn’t productive at all. Important information that is interpreted through consulting and difficult to put on scouting reports. Previous reports on Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Iguchi, etc were handled in a different manner by the Yankees, and proved beneficial to their bottom line.

In any event, Iwaga went five tonight – throwing 115 pitches – and was in trouble every inning. Scooby Hughes, where are you!

Thanks to homers from Mat-Can-Rod and some good pen work from Proc-Viz-Mo, along with a clutch hit from Andy “Little Engine” Phillips in the 6th, the Yankees survived Igawa and get a big win…big in the fact that they’re now two games over .500…and it’s been a long time since they’ve seen that mark this season.

Comments on July 16th vs. The Blue Jays

he was in trouble a lot, but he did show flashes (6 Ks), and 5 ip, 3 er I’ll take from the #5 guy most every time – i’m trying to stay positive, if you havent noticed.

another no show by Edwar today. 9 straight days and counting… i cant believe myers was warming but not edwar! proctor AGAIN, vizcaino AGAIN. it’s tough to kill Torre bc they MOSTLY did the job (although scotty did give up the tying HR). edwar is better than just a mop up guy, Joe.

nice victory in general. I don’t know what to make of Igawa except that he should probably be in the minors working on his command. Perhaps his 7 K’s is indicative of whatever it was that scouts liked about him.

…Let’s just say that Igawa got REAL lucky. There were quite a few loud outs today, one of which was a laser to the wall in dead center in the 4th that practically sent him to the dugout in tears. 3 ER in 5 IP: I would imagine that that’s pretty much his ceiling for as long as he plays in the AL East.

Still, I feel bad for the guy, and, obviously, I want him to do well. But he just cannot locate that junk he’s tossing up there with any degree of consistency.

My take on Igawa is that whoever the Yankees relied on for scouting info on him sold him as a Japanese version of David Wells…91 MPH fastball riding the top of the strike zone, changes and curves low in the zone. They obviously didn’t factor in the differences between Japanese batters and Major League batters. His inability to locate any of his pitches kills any benefit he gets from changing speeds. He can’t change the hitters’ eye levels. He needs to adapt to the strike zone here: waist high is not letter-high. Not to sound PI but how many hitters does he face in Japan who are Troy Glaus big…6’5″ with a long reach?

Well, if you take Kenny Singleton’s word for it, he was told by Japanese pitchers that the hitters here are much stronger than they are in Japan.

Why are we even being polite about it? Igawa sucks. It’s hard to believe he’s going to get “better,” since he’s not some rookie just getting his first taste of pro ball — he was the equivalent of a Cy Young winner in Japan.

I don’t think Igawa is going to be much more than a longman out of the ‘pen and as soon as Hughes is ready that’s what he should be.

What’s kind of incredible is that the Yankees spend all that money on Igawa, and all they ended up with is… Jeff Karstens. But even worse. I guess they should have just let Karstens keep the seat warm for Hughes and let Igawa go to the Mets.